Court keeps dorms, showers open to opposite sex

College of the Ozarks must assign students to dormitories and allow them to use bathrooms and showers based on their claimed gender identity, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Roseann Ketchmark, an Obama appointee, said she would issue a written order soon upholding the Biden administration’s rule.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in February announced the rule barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing—including at private colleges and universities. It followed President Joe Biden’s day-one executive order about transgender discrimination.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the College of the Ozarks, a Christian school in Point Lookout, Mo., argued HUD did not give the required notice and hearing that accompanies such a rule change. They also argued the directive went beyond the Fair Housing Act’s ban on sex discrimination.

In the end, Ketchmark denied the college’s request to block enforcement of the rule because no student complaint of discrimination was actually before the court, The Washington Times reported. But ADF counsel Julie Marie Blake during the hearing argued the college didn’t have to “wait for an actual prosecution or enforcement action before challenging a law’s constitutionality,” according to the Springfield News-Leader.

After the hearing, college spokesperson Valorie Coleman said the school would appeal Ketchmark’s ruling.

Blake accused the Biden administration of gutting legal protections for women, girls, and people of faith: “The same day he called for unity, President Biden signed an executive order that does anything but unify.”